Ruth Carrico, assistant professor, health promotion and behavioral sciences, has been appointed to a 14-member Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee. The group will provide guidance to the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services on health care infection control practice, strategies for surveillance and prevention and control of infections at such facilities as hospitals and nursing homes. It also will recommend new infection control guidelines and updates to current policies related to prevention of such health care-associated infections as bloodstream or surgical site infections.

The City Solutions Center has received an award for best project of the year from the Kentucky Chapter of the American Planning Association. Its project was “Schoolyards and Resources for Learning and Communities: A Design Handbook for Kentucky Schools.”

Royce Coleman, MD, has been named Emergency Department Director of the Year by the Emergency Medicine Foundation of the American College of Emergency Physicians and Blue Jay Consulting. Coleman is the Emergency Department medical director at University of Louisville Hospital and an associate professor of emergency medicine at UofL. He is an ACEP fellow.

Robert Detmering, assistant professor, University Libraries, presented “Government Gals’ Gone Wild: Gender Politics and the Pawnee Library on Parks and Recreation” in the Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Popular Research Area at the National Popular Culture and American Culture Conference, San Antonio, Texas.

Benjamin Foster, professor of accountancy, and Trimbak Shastri, associate professor of accountancy, received a Max Block Distinguished Article award in the category of best policy analysis for “The Subprime Lending Crisis and Reliable Reporting: Limitations to the Use of Fair Value in Unstable Markets,” published in the April 2010 issue of the CPA Journal. The New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants gives the awards to recognize “innovative and thought-provoking articles in the areas of technical analysis, informed comment and policy analysis published in The CPA Journal.”

Robert Fox, Jr., dean of University Libraries, participated in a joint Georgia Tech/Emory University panel presentation titled “Mashup or Crashup: Collaborating with Intra and Extra Library Partners to Create a Merged Library Service Desk” at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) 15th National Conference in Philadelphia, Penn.

Get Healthy Now has been selected as the “Veteran Award” winner for the Mayor’s Healthy Hometown Worksite Wellness Awards. The awards intend to bring attention to employers in the Louisville Metro area that promote the health of their employees through a worksite wellness program. The Veteran Award is presented for excellence in programs that are more than two years old.

Sharmila Makhija, chief and associate professor of the division of gynecologic oncology, a Georgia Cancer Coalition’s Distinguished Cancer Scholar, and holder of the Leach Endowed Chair in obstetrics and gynecology at Emory University in Atlanta, is the new chairman of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Women’s Health at the School of Medicine effective July 1 and subject to approval by the UofL Board of Trustees.

Cam Metcalf, executive director, Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center (based at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering), delivered the keynote luncheon address June 10 at the Sustainability Applied 2011 conference in Windsor, Ontario. His talk, “Evolving Pollution Prevention: From Grass Roots to Suits” focused on the movement of pollution prevention culture developed at the local level to the centers of political leadership.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer announced June 13 that LaQuandra Nesbitt, deputy director of community health administration for the District of Columbia Department of Health, is the new director of the Louisville Metro Department for Public Health and Wellness. Nesbitt also has a faculty appointment in the School of Public Health and Information Sciences.

James O’Brien, chair of the Department of Family and Geriatric Medicine, has been named a fellow at the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland. RCPI is Ireland’s largest postgraduate institution with a mission to develop and maintain high professional standards in medicine.

Chad Owen, associate professor, University Libraries, was appointed to the State Historical Records Advisory Board, the central advisory body in Kentucky for historical records planning and for National Historical Publications and Records Commission-funded projects in Kentucky.

The master of urban planning program ranked at 23 in the “Top 25 According to Educators” category of the 2012 Planetizen rankings, and at 10 in the South Region. Planetizen is a public interest information exchange for the urban planning, design and development fields. Its rankings are considered the only national rankings of planning schools.

Jeffrey Valentine, associate professor, education and counseling psychology, and Marisa Castellano, instructor, NRCCTE, have published “Keeping At-Risk Students in School: A Systematic Review of College Retention Programs,” with colleagues Amy Hirschy, Christine Bremer, Walter Novillo and Aaron Banister. It will be in Volume 3, Number 2 (June) of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.

Jacek Zurada, professor, electrical and computer engineering, is serving as IEEE vice president of publications services and products boards and as chair of the Technical Activity Board Periodicals Committee in 2011. IEEE publishes 145 electrotechnology periodicals. UofL subscribes to IEEE’s most popular product — IEL (IEEE Electronic Library) — and to its electronic delivery platform called IEEEXplore. The portal features nearly 3 million articles. In connection with this activity, Zurada chaired the 2011 Panel of IEEE Editors in Boston. He also presented a plenary talk “Impact Factor with and without Self-citations and New Bibliometric Measures for Journals.”Zurada will present an invited keynote address “Mixing Computational and Artificial Intelligence: Discovery of Prediction Rules in Protein Secondary Structures” at the International Symposium on Innovations in Intelligent Systems and Applications to be held in Istanbul, Turkey, June 15–19. While in Turkey, he also will deliver a lecture in IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecture Series at Yildiz Technical University.